Billington on the up as profits soar

Last year, the break up of former Top 100 company Amco Corporation created two new table toppers in Barnsley – Amco Group and Billington Holdings.

With Amco’s registered office relocating to Leeds, Billington, which designs, fabricates and erects structural steelwork for the construction industry, moves to the top of the table on profits up by £122,000.

Second-placed Riverside Motors Holdings, which operates Volvo, Mitsubishi and Renault dealerships and has outlets in Doncaster, Hull and Scarborough, was a newcomer in last November’s Star Business Barber Harrison & Platt Top 100 SMEs.

The importance of SMEs to Barnsley is indicated by the fact that another two of its most profitable companies are both leading SMEs – Moloney Ventures and R&M Swaine. Moloney joined the Top 100 in 2009 after being established by Tony Moloney chief executive of award winning low fat Weight Watchers cake manufacturer Anthony Alan Foods, to acquire Enterprise Foods’ food manufacturing business.

Enterprise Foods supplies customers throughout the UK with more than 25,000 craft bakery products, sourced from 250 suppliers, ranging from includes kosher, organic and ethnic products to low GI (glycemic index) and gluten and wheat free products.

R&M Swaine owns the Rhythm & Booze off licence chain and more than doubled in size after buying 34 stores from the administrators of failed off-licence operator First Quench in 2009, with the assistance of BHP Corporate Finance.

First Quench traded under the Threshers, Wine Rack and The Local brands and the stores acquired by Rhythm & Booze included eight in Sheffield, two in Rotherham and one in Bawtry. R&M Swaine was recently being suggested as a potential buyer of some of the stores previously operated by failed off license group Oddbins. A five per cent increase in turnover at Naylor Industries has seen the family business, which makes clay and plastic drainage products, garden ware and concrete products, secure a place in the Top 100 and among Barnsley’s most profitable Top 100 companies. Naylor has been manufacturing clay pipes since it was founded by the great-grandfather of its current chief executive in 1890. Major investment in plant and the diversification of its product range in recent years has led to improved productivity and growth in turnover within the group, which has plants in Yorkshire, Fife and the West Midlands.